Saturday, January 2, 2016

The Legacy of Uranium Mining

Brandon Loomis of the Arizona Republic has over the years provided excellent coverage of the legacy of uranium mining in the Southwest. His most recent article focuses on rising uranium contamination near the Grand Canyon:

The levels pose no immediate risk, according to state officials, but reignite calls for a permanent ban on new uranium mines near the Canyon

Story Highlights Radiation around the Pinenut mine is four times higher than the background levels. Nevertheless, state environmental officials say it poses no immediate health risks. Mining opponents say a permanent ban on new uranium mines around the Canyon is needed

A spike in radioactive soil contamination around a remote uranium mine north of the Grand Canyon has caused Arizona regulators to delay issuing new permits for three mines.

Energy Fuels Resources Inc. found elevated radiation just outside its Pinenut Mine, which is north of the Canyon and south of Fredonia. The company has completed mining the site but is storing ore above ground and trucking it to a Utah mill.

Arizona Department of Environmental Quality officials say the contamination is at least four times higher than the area’s background radiation levels but poses no immediate health risk.

Previous articles by Loomis have addressed the toxic legacy for the Navajo people:

Uranium is still a threat. Study finds Navajo uranium miners had a lung-cancer rate nearly 29 times that of Navajos who did not work in the mines....Decades after America's Cold War
uranium binge, the Colorado Plateau remains scarred, poisoning and frightening
a people who still live with the radioactive residue of 521 abandoned mines
scattered across their reservation's 17.2 million acres, which is larger than
West Virginia. The U.S. promises a thorough
cleanup, but at current funding levels, it could take generations to complete. Anger is rising....

A 2000 study published in the
journal Health Physics found Navajo uranium miners had a lung-cancer
rate nearly 29 times that of Navajos who did not work in the mines. From 1969
to 1993, two-thirds of new lung cancers in Navajo men afflicted the miners....

When
the U.S. needed Navajos to mine uranium for atomic bombs, they went willingly.
Decades later, the Navajo Reservation is dotted with signs like this one posted
by the Environmental Protection Agency in Church Rock, N.M. There are 521
abandoned uranium mines on the reservations.

What we learn from Loomis' reports is that people and eco-systems are DISPOSABLE when uranium mining occurs.

In my opinion, Uranium is the one ring (a la Tolkein) that destroys the heart/spirit of all who covet it.

On a tangential note, I wonder whether the Utah uranium mill that is processing the uranium trucked from the Grand Canyon area is the one sold by the US to the Russians, as approved by Hilary Clinton while Secretary of State (see my discussion here):

[excerpted] The Times has reported that people involved in a series of Canadian uranium-mining deals channelled money to the Clinton Foundation
while the firm had business before the State Department. And, in one
case, a Russian investment bank connected to the deals paid money to
Bill Clinton personally, through a half-million-dollar speaker’s
fee.....

The path to a Russian acquisition of American uranium deposits began in
2005 in Kazakhstan, where the Canadian mining financier Frank Giustra
orchestrated his first big uranium deal, with Mr. Clinton at his side....

Within days of the visit, Mr. Giustra’s fledgling company, UrAsia Energy
Ltd., signed a preliminary deal giving it stakes in three uranium mines
controlled by the state-run uranium agency Kazatomprom....

If
the Kazakh deal was a major victory, UrAsia did not wait long before
resuming the hunt. In 2007, it merged with Uranium One, a South African
company with assets in Africa and Australia, in what was described as a
$3.5 billion transaction. The new company, which kept the Uranium One
name, was controlled by UrAsia investors including Ian Telfer, a
Canadian who became chairman. Through a spokeswoman, Mr. Giustra, whose
personal stake in the deal was estimated at about $45 million, said he
sold his stake in 2007.

Soon,
Uranium One began to snap up companies with assets in the United
States. In April 2007, it announced the purchase of a uranium mill in
Utah and more than 38,000 acres of uranium exploration properties in
four Western states, followed quickly by the acquisition of the Energy
Metals Corporation and its uranium holdings in Wyoming, Texas and Utah.
That deal made clear that Uranium One was intent on becoming “a
powerhouse in the United States uranium sector with the potential to
become the domestic supplier of choice for U.S. utilities,” the company
declared....

The story of the Clintons and Uranium One is a very long and complicated narrative that I recommend readers peruse in more detail at the links above.

The moral of the story is that uranium is the object of great conflict by great powers who care little for the health and well-being of people and the environment.

About Me

I am a Professor at a large public university. I study political economy and biopolitics (the politics of life). My interests are diverse but are broadly concerned with economic, social and environmental justice. I have published 5 books: Crisis Communication, Liberal Democracy and Ecological Sustainability: The Threat of Financial and Energy Complexes in the Twenty-First Century (2016); Fukusima and the Privatization of Risk (2013); Constructing Autism (2005); Governmentality, Biopower and Everyday Life (2008/2011); Governing Childhood (2010).
I also participated in an edited collection on Fukushima: Fukushima: Dispossession or Denuclearization (2014).